What can best be described as a skiffle band playing in the middle of Market Street in San Francisco. Cars, buses and cyclists maneuvering around them.
Photo from my phone on 29th March 2012
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For most of the winter of 2011–2012, the Bering Sea has been choking with sea ice. Though ice obviously forms there every year, the extent of the ice cover has been unusually widespread this season. In fact, the past several months have included the second highest ice extent in the satellite record for the Bering Sea region, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).
The natural-color image above shows the Bering Sea and the coasts of Alaska and northeastern Russia on March 19, 2012. The image was acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. Black lines mark the coastlines, many of which have ice shelves or frozen bays extending beyond their land borders.
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Felix Baumgartner jumps from 22km above Mexico
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The whole Earth in one image
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The whole Universe in one image.
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A number of striking sculptures from the first solo exhibition of Korean artist Jang Yong Sun entitled Particles of Dark Matter. Sun welds thousands of steel rings to form these amoeba-like structures that despite having the appearance of being precariously fragile must be extremely heavy. If you like these, you might also enjoy the work of Mike Castator. (via 준다메다 and art company gig)
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The Ruins Of Detroit
A seven year project from two French photographers who have been taking images of Detroit, Michigan, USA. Their project beautifully displays the city’s decaying buildings, once stunning classical venues, factories, hotels and municipal edifices.
These fantastic images show the decline of society in a city once the economic hub of the industrial USA. They show the decline of once great halls of entertainment, employment and human interaction that now sit decrepit and dying.
The work from Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre can be seen on display at the Wilmotte Gallery, Lichfield Studios in London until May and also online here http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/
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I didn’t do this—my pal Shawn Cheng did. If you are Minneapolis and like things that are awesome you should come to his opening tomorrow (Friday the 17th) at Franklin Art Works. I’ll be there.
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Avishai Cohen Trio have been on my playlist for well over a year now ever since a friend introduced me to them. An Israeli Jazz trio who make very wonderful emotive freeform music.
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Disco in 2012
Interview extracts with Todd Terje and Greg Wilson from Beatportal about Disco in 2012
GREG WILSON
The last time we looked in-depth at the genre, “nu-disco” was all the rage. What were your thoughts on that trend?
I never liked the term, it’s too narrow for what’s played, and gives the wrong impression, or rather, only part of the impression. When I DJ I’m drawing from a 30, 40, sometimes even 50-year spectrum of groove-based music, but put together in a non-nostalgic way that is relevant to now. To call that nu-disco, not as a small sub-section of the larger canvas, but an overall category, is really misleading.
What do you think of the current state of disco, disco-house, edits, etc.?
There are a lot of good edits about, probably more than ever. There are also a lot of not so good, or needless edits, but it’s the same as with anything, you always have to sort the wheat from the chaff. At club level, I’ve noticed a gradual change in the average age of the people who come to my gigs—overall it’s much younger now than when I started out again eight years ago. This is obviously a strong sign that the scene is rejuvenating, rather than becoming old and outmoded. In many respects I feel we’ve only scratched the surface, and this whole thing is about to gain a fresh momentum, informing the future in its remoulding of the past.
Are there any contemporary producers & DJs involved in the scene that people should keep an eye and ear out for?
There are loads of people doing interesting stuff – from the well-established names like Todd Terje and The Revenge to the lesser-known people like Duff Disco and Psychemagik. I really believe it’s a highly fertile period for expression, and this will be reflected, just as elsewhere, in dance culture, with the re-edits movement providing a necessary portal to new hybrid forms to come.
What is your favorite disco production of all time, and why?
Always impossible to pick just one thing, but, seeing you’ve asked, I’ll go for “You + Me = Love” by Undisputed Truth, with the maestro, Norman Whitfield, in truly epic mode. He knew exactly how to build it up and break it all down—he knew the alchemy.
TODD TERJE
Before you started releasing your own productions, you were infamous for your underground edits. What are the pros and cons of official edits, like your recent rework of Roxy Music’s ”Love Is The Drug”?
Plain edits are just easy cuts and pastes. Sometimes that can force you to be creative as you don’t have much material, but the best thing about edits is that they’re so damn quick to do. When you have 30+ stems with kicks, snares, overheads, bass guitar, vox, etc., it gets complicated very fast. On the other hand, you have the chance to change sounds on a micro level, things you couldn’t access if you only had a stereo file.
If you could have access to the master stems of any track to edit, what would it be?
There are plenty of tunes on my want-list, (un)classics like “Downtown Samba” by Yello, “I Want You” by Marvin Gaye, etc. I learn a lot from looking at old stems; you realize that so much of the magic is actually in the way it’s mixed down and mastered, not necessarily how it was recorded.
Who is your ultimate disco hero, and why?
I’ve listened to and learned a LOT from Walter Gibbons.
What is your favorite disco production of all time, any why?
“African Suite” by Richie Rome is one of the most out-there disco productions ever to be released on a major label, and I’m very glad they did release it, as it’s been a big inspiration for many years. It’s got a perfect balance between functionality and stupidity.
Further interviews with 6th Borough Project, Joey Negro and others can be found here http://www.beatportal.com/feed/item/disco-in-2012/
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Secularism is not a threat
Great article in the Guardian this week about the true meaning of secularism
Is religion really under threat? - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/14/is-religion-really-under-threat
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Going to see Psychemagik this weekend at Low Life, great mix to get me started
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(Source: myheadisweak)
